<![CDATA[DEBT SERIOUS: WEEKENDER]]>https://debtserious.substack.com/s/weekenderhttps://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!oND7!,w_256,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff5233b2b-ec68-4422-b71a-dc49f0aab821_800x800.pngDEBT SERIOUS: WEEKENDERhttps://debtserious.substack.com/s/weekenderSubstackWed, 08 Jul 2026 11:27:29 GMT<![CDATA[WEEKENDER | 3 July 2026]]>https://debtserious.substack.com/p/weekender-3-july-2026https://debtserious.substack.com/p/weekender-3-july-2026Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:28:54 GMT

Weekly Debt Capital Markets Digest

News

  1. Sovereign wealth funds are shifting from public to private markets for two reasons: (1) S&P 500 concentration in its top 10 companies and higher equity-bond correlation; and (2) AI exposure, primarily through private credit and infrastructure (Financial Times)

  2. Blue Owl’s BDCs received $3.6B (19% of NAV) and $1.1B (38% of NAV) in Q2 redemption requests, down from 22% and 40% last quarter. Both honored 5% (Semafor)

  3. Goldman Sachs BDC received redemption requests totaling 3.24% of NAV. Like Oaktree’s 4.5%, the figure is below the typical 5% quarterly cap (ACI)

  4. CEO of BlackRock TCP is leaving the firm. The BDC has been in the news for its 19% NAV cut in one quarter and a subsequent DOJ investigation (Bloomberg)

  5. Non-traded BDC investors may wait years, not quarters, to redeem due to a rolling backlog. The product was not designed for 15%–40% quarterly redemption requests. Interview with Mark Goldberg (PitchBook)

  6. BNPL and forward-flow financing provided by private credit firms are raising concerns among experts because of the scale at which they operate (Bloomberg)

  7. Software loans weakened before the SaaSpocalypse: 6.1% traded below 80 cents on the dollar in September 2025, versus a five-year average of 4.4%. (WSJ)

  8. Medallia loan: piecing together what went wrong and how lenders managed it (Financial Times)

  9. LPs and opportunistic credit funds are taking preferred equity stakes in PE funds as sponsors seek new ways to raise liquidity amid a slowdown in exits (Financial Times)

  10. Europe’s private credit market has avoided the US panic, thanks to lower software exposure and a smaller retail investor base, with no semi-liquid fund redemption headlines (Private Debt Investor)

  11. Australia's A$200B ($140B) private credit market, where real estate makes up about half of lending, is going through a tightening of loan standards driven by tougher market conditions and heightened regulatory scrutiny (IFR)

  12. Emerging market bond sales grew 15% y-o-y, reaching a record $450B YTD. The 157bps spread on EM debt is the lowest in 20 years, fueling the wave of issuance (Bloomberg)

  13. Largest bond managers focus on five-year Treasuries in the new Warsh era, as they shield from short-term volatility and appear to be a bargain relative to two- and 30-year paper (Bloomberg)

  14. Pimco says differences in NAV marks across private credit managers lead investors to apply varying discounts to BDCs and drive different levels of redemptions (Bloomberg)

  15. Pimco has increased its private placement activity, including deals with sovereign governments (Qatar, Kuwait, Colombia) and private credit transactions, such as AI data centres and Blue Owl’s bonds (Financial Times)

  16. Private placement bonds are experiencing a renaissance, driven by life insurers' annuity sales and the need to deploy capital. AI financing leads demand, with other industries also tapping the market (Bloomberg)

  17. Bank-capital rules proposed by the Fed penalize JPM- & BofA-type commercial banks while benefiting Goldman & Morgan Stanley-type IB/trading/prime brokerage-heavy banks (Bloomberg)

  18. Saks Global emerged from bankruptcy after selling half of its stores and slashing its debt by 75% ($1.2B), wiping out shareholders and giving control to senior lenders. It was also renamed Exemplar Luxury Group (Reuters)

  19. EchoStar’s Dish DBS and Dish Wireless filed for bankruptcy largely driven by inability to repay $2B of 7.75% senior notes. Full breakdown (Bondoro)

  20. Japan's weak currency drove a 30% year-over-year increase in bankruptcies, to 45 firms. The YTD total is the highest since 2022, when currency-related bankruptcies were first tracked (Bloomberg)

Transactions

  1. Morgan Stanley Direct Lending Fund raised $350m in 5-year notes at 2.20% above Treasuries (Bloomberg)

  2. SoftBank is negotiating a $10B margin loan backed by its stake in OpenAI. After lenders pushed back on using the OpenAI stake as the sole collateral, SoftBank proposed providing a repayment guarantee (BigGo Finance)

  3. Apollo-owned Atlas SP provided a $400m warehouse facility to Ireland-based Aquila Air Capital to expand its engine and commercial aircraft portfolios (AOL)

  4. Sixth Street and KKR provided $1 billion of preferred equity to BridgeBio to accelerate the launch of genetic disease therapies. The investment carries a 7% step-up dividend that increases to 17% (Bloomberg)

  5. Royal Bank of Canada is working on a $2B significant risk transfer (SRT) transaction to offload exposure to a portfolio of AI-linked loans (Bloomberg)

  6. Standard Chartered arranged a $50m green bond for African Frontier Capital, guaranteed by Green Guarantee Co, raising funds from UK and US investors and paving the way for more such issuances in Africa (Bloomberg)

  7. Hercules Capital provided a $200m facility to 4D Molecular Therapeutics as the company advances into Phase 3 development and pre-commercial planning for its single-dose gene therapy (Biospace)

Chart of the Week

Strong market returns and higher interest rates eliminated funding gaps for corporate defined benefit pension plans for the first time in nearly two decades.

]]><![CDATA[WEEKENDER | 27 June 2026]]>https://debtserious.substack.com/p/weekender-27-june-2026https://debtserious.substack.com/p/weekender-27-june-2026Sat, 27 Jun 2026 22:30:14 GMT

Weekly Debt Capital Markets Digest

News

  1. Lee Robinson of Altana Wealth, who made 900% betting against subprime mortgages is launching a fund to bet against private credit-exposed insurers (Bloomberg)

  2. Morgan Stanley’s $7B North Haven Private Income Fund received redemption requests for 11.6% of outstanding units, but honored its 5% quarterly cap (Reuters)

  3. US life insurers hold $807B in private credit, representing 20% of their $4T fixed-income portfolio. The allocation is expected to increase (Bloomberg)

  4. Damis Holdings files for Chapter 11, with the company’s liabilities estimated at $500m-$1B (Petition)

  5. BoE has sent alts a hypothetical stress scenario that includes rising inflation, a 4% contraction in UK GDP, and an increase in interest rates to 7%. It is viewed by participants as too severe (ACI)

  6. Apollo’s $26B Apollo Debt Solutions BDC received redemption requests for 17% of its outstanding units (4.3% from onshore investors and 12.5% from offshore investors), but honored its 5% cap (CNBC)

  7. PE zombie funds are expected to multiply as M&A activity remains muted. Among LPs, 54% would expect to cut fees, 18% to reset incentives, and 11% to remove managers (Bloomberg)

  8. Ares’ $11B Ares Strategic Income Fund, a BDC, received redemption requests for 14.4% of its outstanding units (vs. 11.6% last quarter) but honored its 5% cap (Financial Times)

  9. Blackstone REIT’s $343m loan on an office building in Chicago’s financial center has gone into default after being on a watchlist since 2022. Chicago’s office market has struggled to recover from the pandemic (Bloomberg)

  10. 25% of mid-sized insurance companies tracked by Clearwater own stakes in private credit funds to which they also lend. Clearwater doesn’t track the largest insurers, where the figure may be higher (WSJ)

  11. JPMorgan Public and Private Credit Fund, an interval fund, won approval from the SEC for monthly 2% redemptions instead of quarterly, semi-annual, or annual redemptions, as required by law (Bloomberg)

  12. European PE executives increasingly borrow against their carried interest in their funds, as exits remain muted (Financial Times)

  13. Indian banks are offering Non-Resident Indians dollar-denominated deposits at up to 7.1%, and lending up to 9x against those deposits. The purpose is to attract dollars back into the country following a sharp fall in forex reserves (Bloomberg)

  14. Venezuela hired Centerview Partners to restructure its $240B debt, which is higher than market participants’ prior estimates of $150B-$200B (Financial Times)

  15. Sheila Bair, Former Chair of the FDIC, is concerned about bank deregulation, banks’ exposure to private credit, and parallels with the events that led to the 2008 financial crisis (Politico)

  16. US IG bond sales hit a record $175B in June, up 60% YoY, driven by the AI capex boom and concerns over potential rate hikes (Bloomberg)

  17. 10.6%, or 100 million Chinese consumers are behind on debt payments, which has resulted in $329B of non-performing loans for financial institutions, a 21% increase y-o-y (Bloomberg)

  18. SEC is probing Continuation Vehicles (CVs) used by private equity firms, including conflicts of interest, valuations, and whether investor disclosures are sufficient (Reuters)

  19. Private-to-public BDC arbitrage is gaining momentum, but there are some differences in portfolio composition (Bloomberg)

  20. 144A bond allocations by U.S. corporate treasurers have risen to 2% of portfolios from 0% two years ago, driven by an average 52 bps premium over similarly rated public bonds (Bloomberg)

  21. Insurers have increased their allocation to private credit from 4% in 2018 to 9% today and now own an estimated 30%–50% of all private credit assets (AI-CIO)

  22. “Credit allocators don’t fully appreciate that we’ve moved into a higher-interest-rate environment that many are not accustomed to.” – Interview with PGIM Credit’s Co-CIO (AI-CIO)

  23. SpaceX’s $2.5B bonds saw their spread widen to 112 bps over the risk-free rate from 106 bps just days after issuance, suggesting some softening in investor confidence, which is unusual for such a recently issued bond (MarketWatch)

  24. Aggressive LMEs that disadvantaged certain creditors are increasingly derailing prepackaged bankruptcies, turning what were meant to be fast-track restructurings into protracted and contentious Chapter 11 cases (WSJ)

  25. India’s ABS market has surged to a record $16B through March (35% y-o-y), as global banks gain exposure to its fast-growing domestic credit market (Bloomberg)

Transactions

  1. Brookfield is seeking a $525m loan for La Trobe Financial Corp, an Australian non-bank lender, to fund a payout to investors and refinance existing debt (Bloomberg)

  2. Apollo-backed Eolo SpA is seeking a $575m loan from Apollo to refinance its existing debt (Bloomberg)

  3. Blackstone-backed data centre operator AirTrunk is in talks to secure a $3B loan to finance a new hyperscale campus in Sydney (Bloomberg)

  4. BMO is offering a $775m loan for HIG Capital-backed Pellera Technologies at an 8-cent discount (Bloomberg)

  5. Sony ended a 28-year absence from the USD bond market, issuing $1B of 5- and 10-year USD-denominated bonds. The 10-year tranche priced at 60bps over Treasuries (Bloomberg)

  6. ByteDance is in talks to raise a $20B, 3- to 5-year loan, which would be its largest-ever offshore borrowing (Bloomberg)

  7. China sold €5B ($5.7B) of euro-denominated bonds, its biggest-ever deal in euros. Its 5-, 8-, and 12-year notes were priced at 3 bps, 12 bps, and 22 bps above the mid-swap rate, respectively (Bloomberg)

  8. Mexico raised $6.3B in bonds to finance buybacks of existing debt, with the new issuance priced at 185–195 bps over comparable Treasuries, versus 220 bps for the outstanding debt (Bloomberg)

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